India + China = Lights, Camera, Zombies

If you’ve been near a movie theater this summer, you’ve probably been fed a steady diet of blockbusters such as “Iron Man 3,” “World War Z,” “Man of Steel,” “Fast and Furious 6” and “The Hangover 3.”

Many Hollywood releases this year have been franchises, sequels, reboots or superhero movies. Are big “tent pole” movies a threat to entire genres of filmmaking, and do big markets like Russia, China and India – where audiences seem fond of big budget action – tilt the scales in favor of the ghouls and gunfire?

Producer Lynda Obst looks at this in her new book, “Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business.” Ms. Obst, whose work includes “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Contact” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 days,” spoke recently with India Real Time. Edited excerpts:

The Wall Street Journal: The book really resonated with me as a moviegoer. My husband only likes to watch zombie movies or robots, to the extent that I have stopped going to the movies. Who do you think is to blame for this turn of events? Is it just Hollywood or would you say ‘Hey emerging markets! It’s your fault too.’

Lynda Obst: I think it’s a little of both. We certainly have a big fanboy base here in the United States that loves its zombies – you are married to one, I gave birth to one. We also have a big teenage market that for many years drove this heavy metal, horror, zombie and action market before the emerging markets joined in. And the power of the [teenage] market was that they always went to the movies on weekends in droves. The longer a movie played, the more the theaters made.

After the collapse of the DVD market – which used to be 50% of a movie’s profits – the movie business fell prey to the same fate as the music market and the publishing business. The power of technology made movies downloadable for free. And it [Hollywood] discovered quite conveniently that the emerging markets were building theaters at an amazing rate as new capitalists and new middle-classes were going to the movies and paying to see these astonishing special effects that technology was providing.

WSJ: ‘Titanic’ — or ‘Romeo and Juliet on a boat’ as the book puts it — was the turning point for the international markets.

Ms. Obst: Exactly. The themes were international, the effects were astonishing and new theaters were being built in gigantic numbers in China. In India, it was a proliferation of multiplexes. India is a very special case because it has always had a booming movie industry and a large population that went to its own movies. The movies made in the U.S. never dominated the market there. But with multiplexes making more money and the emergence of the middle-class, there were more screens to play American movies in places that were dominated by Bollywood movies. So the American movie market started to have a place in India.

In China, it was a phenomenal growth. It was astonishing. This year, the Chinese market became the number two market in the world for U.S. films even though there is a quota [on the number of films that can be released annually] and we get only 17%-21% of our revenues from there. That’s because so many movie screens were built. It is anticipated that China will be the number one movie market in the world by 2020.

WSJ: How has that changed writing in Hollywood? What travels well abroad for international audiences and what fails?

Ms. Obst: Suddenly movies that were culturally nuanced – dependent on the American sense of humor, on our mating rituals – played less well when we had the emerging markets [as our main audience] than when our international markets were primarily European. It’s culturally much easier now to export these gigantic movies with effects and action because of what the audiences started wanting. They wanted from their own filmmakers culturally nuanced films that were based on their country’s mores and habits and mating rituals.

Amy Stuart

The cover of the book “Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business.

Certainly in India, I prefer Indian romantic films, which are so different from ours and their action sequences. India doesn’t need us for comedies. The Internet started becoming the cultural transmitter rather than our romantic movies. Movies that had too much dialogue became secondary to movies that were easier to loop and had spectacular action sequences where cities were being blown up. Crashes, huge sound effects were much easier to export.

WSJ: Is Hollywood underestimating the market abroad for more nuanced movies? In India, there are people who want to watch meaningful movies, like the types of films you see around Oscar time.

Ms. Obst: Yes, I do to an extent. But you know it’s called ‘Show Business’ not ‘Show Show.’ That’s why I wrote the book, because we have to figure out a way to put the ‘Show’ back in ‘Business’ so it’s not all ‘Business-Business.’ People at the end of the day don’t want to see how many times you can blow up the White House or Paris. [Films] have to be based on something other than effects at this point. Exhaustion has set in. Maybe each studio can make one less blockbuster. We’ve seen four flops this year that were very expensive. Make two or three movies [for international audiences] that are very discerning. As you can see with ‘The Lone Ranger’ and some other movies this summer, hits are not automatic just because you’re blowing something up or because robots are eating aliens.

WSJ: I’m sure you’ve already seen Netflix’s ‘Orange is the New Black’ and ‘House of Cards.’ Netflix and HBO seem to be redefining storytelling for the small screen. Is that where audiences starved for good plots will be diverted? Are you excited about the future that way?

Ms. Obst: Really excited for that, when you see an industry in that much change, when you see new venues being born. What I’m really watching is television and talking about it all the time. The pitches are alive in television – you make up an idea and pitch it. If they [network executives] don’t buy it, you can sell it to somebody else.

Writers are able to do more exciting dramas and comedies in television than in the movies right now. You’ve got to go where it’s more challenging and stimulating to work. For certain directors, it’s still challenging and stimulating to work in the movies. But for many of us producers, there’s more energy in TV right now.

Smriti Rao is a news anchor and producer. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, Ms. Rao has worked with major Indian TV networks including NDTV and Bloomberg’s India affiliate-UTV.